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"The settings saved on this computer for the network do not match the requirements of the network"

Question

My computer was working and all of a sudden I can not longer connect to my network and when I see all available networks mine says "The settings saved on this computer for the network do not match the requirements of the network" How can I change the settings on the computer so that they match the requirements of the network? I can access other networks and get online like that, but my network, even the local one, is busted. Please help!

Answers

This issue usually occurs on wireless network connections. I suggest that you turn off any security feature of wireless. Please click Start->Control Panel, double-click Network Connections, right click on the wireless adapter and select Properties. From there choose Wireless Networks, click on your wireless network name and choose properties. Under Network Authentication choose Open to turn off the wireless security. Please try to connect.

If the issue persists, I suggest that you delete the connection, and recreate the wireless network connections. The following website may help you on creating the wireless connection.

Important Note: Microsoft provides third-party contact information to help you find technical support. This contact information may change without notice. Microsoft does not guarantee the accuracy of this third-party contact information.

Is the issue resolved?

If the issue persists, I suggest that you reinstall the wireless adapter driver, and re-create the connection again.

All replies

This issue usually occurs on wireless network connections. I suggest that you turn off any security feature of wireless. Please click Start->Control Panel, double-click Network Connections, right click on the wireless adapter and select Properties. From there choose Wireless Networks, click on your wireless network name and choose properties. Under Network Authentication choose Open to turn off the wireless security. Please try to connect.

If the issue persists, I suggest that you delete the connection, and recreate the wireless network connections. The following website may help you on creating the wireless connection.

Important Note: Microsoft provides third-party contact information to help you find technical support. This contact information may change without notice. Microsoft does not guarantee the accuracy of this third-party contact information.

Is the issue resolved?

If the issue persists, I suggest that you reinstall the wireless adapter driver, and re-create the connection again.

Go to where your wireless networks are managed. For vista this is Control Panel....Network and Sharing Centre and Manage Wireless Networks (On the left hand side). Click on your network and remove it from the list. Then search for avaliable wireless networks again and connect again to your network. That should do it.

PS You may also have to do this if you change a password or setting on your router.

Locate your wireless network profile, then edit or delete the network profile that you have problem to connect, after that test to connect again. Also go to wireless router management page, check and confirm your wireless network setting. Hope it helps.

i'm still a bit stuck after trying everything suggested! i'v deleted the profile, reinstalled the driver and it still says the settings do not match. its now asking me to press my configuration button my on router, which doesnt it doesnt seem to have (d
link dir-635). i'm on vista 32 bit connecting to an xp machine. my network adapter is atheros AR5006 EG wireless adapter. anyone got any more suggestions?

Thank You soleary35! You saved me from just about never figuring this out without going for professional help. I was lost and your advice worked. I am very grateful to you for your time and consideration. :)

I can't help but chuckle, because your solution was totally awesome, and right ON!! A million thank yous for solving my problem that has kept me from using my desktop pc since May! That's six months ago!!

I'm a network administrator in a medium-sized organization. Although I don't manage the APs, I know the settings I'm putting in are correct and they work on almost all computers. But sometimes I encounter a laptop which displays the message in subject of
this question. Just today I had a case where it used to work but stopped working recently, so the laptop user came to to solve the problem. I haven't solved this problem reliably as of yet. Today's laptop had Atheros AR5B95 on Windows 7.

Oh, one thing I noticed in this particular case that seemed strange to me: when I connected the wired network, the wired connection had the same as our wireless connection. This is what I tried to resolve with 3) and 4) but either it didn't help or somehow
the wired connection got the name of our SSID again.

Thank you sooooooo much, we resolved a problem with one laptop in the house (diff problem) only for mine to come up with the above error message. Been scratching my head wondering why all of a sudden the settings had changed - it must have been
something to do with fixing the other laptop afterall. NOT techi at all - i just want to plug it it and it work with none of the faffing taht goes with it

this is the problem my house mate has had. I have talk talk super fast premium multi user etc internet. i am using windows vista premium, no probs, my house mate is on windows seven ultimate. After a week of no probs my house mates laptop
started coming up with the aforementioned error. Upon discovering this error my house mate rang microsoft only to be given advice like: "have you restarted your computer?" "have you restarted the router i.e unplug for 10 secs and pluged
back in?". Now im no computer genius but already suggested this to my housemate who has no or very little computer knowledge, he wasnt sure how to do it so i did it for him. im sure personally the error is with windows 7. When my house mate
was speaking to microsoft they set up a conference call with themselves my house mate and talk talk. Now im not being funny but why would microsoft need to speak to talk talk when im currently online (using vista and PSN for that matter)??? The problem
is obviously not with my provider talk talk but with windows 7. I am throughly disappointed with the service my housemate has been provided with as i have always been preferable to microsoft over apple. I have been using the windows OS
since i was about 6 years old and have never been so disappointed with the service i have received. I for one would like an honest answer from microsoft with regard to this issue, i bet there are alot of people out there whom have bought a new wireless
card or adapter due to this issue. A suggestion to microsoft would be to fix this issue as a matter of urgency or give their customers who are suffering from inabilty to use the internet honest advice of how the matter can be resolved instead of blaming service
providers! Microsoft why is this an issue with windows 7 and not vista? Why can i connect with my sony ps3/ vista and not windows 7? why did my internet work on windows 7 2 days ago nad not now? Why am i getting crappy answers from your automated phone
service and human operators? Honest answers please?!?!? i have searched all the forums for advice on this matter to no prevail, i have tried all suggested solutions on my housemates behalf and still no solution.

Then I´ve discovered that laptop didn´t recognize network correctly, even it was WPA2 it claim it to be WEP, so I searched for latest version of adapter drivers and installed them ( with a 3G stick) Vóila, now the adapter works perfectly.

Thank you so much, soleary! I have been having this problem and couldn't figure out how it got that way, for a bunch of things stopped working right at once. Sending good thoughts your way for being able to connect to my network again.....

Your problem may be due to the fact that Windows only supports one IP stack - ie. it can only possibly connect to one network / subnet at one time.

So if you set up a wired and wireless network on the same machine they must have all the same parameters (specifically the same Gateway) or you get into trouble and Windows becomes hopelessly confused.

It's possible to work around this (for example setting your WiFi router to static route the laptop WiFi to the wired router) but that depends on you network design.

At every step in the process of getting it to work you must do a hard reboot of the PC to make absolutely sure that your changes are fully propagated to the drivers and the network adaptors.

Another issue with Windows is that changes which are made and registered in the GUI seem not always to get propagated to the hardware (even though it may report that the change has been made).

This can lead to a great deal of time wasted debugging non-problems.

Even Windows 7 which "resets the network adaptor" each time it tried to diagnose a network problem, still seems to suffer from this - ie. "resetting the network" is not identical to re-booting.

Strange thing is, I've checked the information presented from a mouse-over of the network connection info (from system tray). When it's connected and working fine it shows as wireless N with 3 bars, but when it drops off with the aforementioned error it
states it as wireless G with a red "X". Don't understand how it can connect fine one minute then drop off the next with this message.

I've checked the settings and compared it to the windows 7 laptop he has and it's identical. I've even tried to set up the connection on my windows 7 64bit laptop and that works fine. I've deleted and recreated the connection a number of times but still
the same problem.

Go to where your wireless networks are managed. For vista this is Control Panel....Network and Sharing Centre and Manage Wireless Networks (On the left hand side). Click on your network and remove
it from the list. Then search for avaliable wireless networks again and connect again to your network. That should do it.

PS You may also have to do this if you change a password or setting on your router.

Hi Arthur, I realise this advice you gave is 4 years old so sorry if you are still being pestered by people like me. With the same problem I have deleted the wireless network connection, re-installed the driver, even tried a system restore but it hasn't
fixed the problem. The network is working ok and I am accessing it now with my iPad. The windows 7 desktop can see my wireless network and the signal is good so the D link wireless adapter is working. I have checked the network properties and the security
key is what it should be. Windows diagnostics is of no help after a refresh adapter fails. Any advice would be much appreciated. Cheers, Adrian

Hello Adrian. I'm quite new to this community so can I suggest you check that the security type is what is should be? That might be the problem. So this is what i did:

1.Click start, then click Control Panel.

2.Click Network and Internet. Then Network and Sharing Center. (Network and Sharing Center can be located many ways. You can click the icon on the right side of the task bar that shows the networks you can connect to. At the bottom it should say open Network
and Sharing Center.)

3.On the left side of the Network and Sharing Center, click "Manage wireless networks".

4. You should now be at a list of networks to connect to. Right click on the network that you are having trouble with, and click "Remove network."

5. Now look for a panel close to the top of that window. The panel has functions such as "Add". "Remove", "Move down" etc... Click "Add".

6. Click on Manually create a network profile. Type the name of the network. Try the different security types one by one to find the one that will work. (make sure to put the correct security key each time you try a security type). Create the network profiles
one by one until you find the one that works. Some security types might has 2 corresponding encryption types. So you will have to try each of the encryption types.

Example for step 6:

network name: helptoothers

security type: XXX

encryption type: YYY

key: whateveryouwant

possible result: still cannot connect.

Go back to "Manage Wireless networks" then right click on the network that still doesn't work. Click "Properties", click on the "Security" tab. and try the other encryption type if there are more than 1. If not, move on to the next security type and try
it. Hopefully you will eventually reach the right one. I really Hope this helps. I tried to make it as detailed as possible.

you. legend. i know its a long time since you posted this but i just set up a new modem and my dad's computer was the only one that couldnt connect with this problem. i tried Arthur Xie's solution, didn't work. yours was way simpler and was a simple solution.
I THANK YOU.

I found the same thing, sometimes its just one of the settings changed. For example when it happened to me it was one of the encryption codes that was incorrect, just compare with a friend and make sure they are all the same.

(EDIT) In order to change it, right click and go into properties for that internet option you are trying to connect too.

Go to where your wireless networks are managed. For vista this is Control Panel....Network and Sharing Centre and Manage Wireless Networks (On the left hand side). Click on your network and remove it from the list.
Then search for avaliable wireless networks again and connect again to your network. That should do it.

PS You may also have to do this if you change a password or setting on your router.

soleary35, Thanks gazzillion times! IT WORKED FOR ME! :) I feel like I am an IT :P

I'm replying to this a looong time after the original posting, but I ran into the same thing tonight, went googling for a solution, and found this post and long thread.

I thought I would post, because my problem turned out to be something very simple. The login information for the connection on my Win8 laptop computer had somehow gotten the security protocol for the password wrong. My wifi router (from Verizon
FiOS) was set up for WPA2. The settings associated with the connection on my computer had the correct ssid network name and password, and also showed WPA2, HOWEVER the Encryption type was set to but the protocol setting had changed to TKIP, when it should
have been AES.

As soon as I switched it back, everything worked fine again.

By the way, to get to those settings, I clicked the wifi network strength icon in the notification area to get a list of wifi networks, right-clicked my network, clicked View Connection Properties, and clicked the Security tab.

An easy fix but only because I remembered that the encryption should be AES! Good luck any who stumble onto this forum.

I had the same issue as above. I tried restarting the modem, restarting the laptop, restoring the laptop to a previous point where it was working. Took the laptop to the neighbors house and the wifi worked. Hence knew it was not an issues with the hardware.
Also not an issue with the Internet as my phone and tablet picked up the wifi.

After getting frustrated i tried the instructions above and it worked like a charm.

Word of caution make sure you have a copy of the drivers. It took some searching online to find the drivers.

Go to where your wireless networks are managed. For vista this is Control Panel....Network and Sharing Centre and Manage Wireless Networks (On the left hand side). Click on your network and remove it
from the list. Then search for avaliable wireless networks again and connect again to your network. That should do it.

PS You may also have to do this if you change a password or setting on your router.

Update on this issue - you have to run CCleaner, both the regular cleanup and the registry cleaner after you delete the connection or else the solution described here will fail when you try to recreate the connection.

I want to thank you for putting the "Then reinstall the driver with your driver CD. After installing, re-create the connection" at the end of the instructions, so that anyone following the instructions that do not have their CD
are stuck with no Ethernet adapter at all! I know, my fault right? I should have read the entire post first.

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